


Modern Dutch

by aurilly



Category: Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse, Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-27 19:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5061661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jeeves goes missing, one of Bertie's old comrades from Eton volunteers to sleuth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modern Dutch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



I had only just finished hanging the painting when Jeeves returned from his afternoon out. 

“Come, Jeeves, and take a look at this corker.”

Jeeves drifted over in that quiet way of his, and was at my side in an instant.

“May I ask at what I am looking, sir?”

“Painting from Uncle Wilberforce, Jeeves. He gave it to me as a birthday present. Adds a touch of the old je ne sais quoi to the surroundings, don’t you say?”

“It is indeed unique, sir.”

I knew that tone. It didn’t take one of your Newtons to recognize the tone in a man’s voice when he’s taken a sour eye to something, whether it’s white mess jackets, moustaches, or, in this case, precious works of art.

“Out with it, Jeeves,” I said masterfully, asserting my role, as I have had to do from time to time, when Jeeves gets above himself like a pony trying to make a go of it at Goodwood. “You don’t like this painting, do you?”

“I cannot with full honesty say I do, sir.”

“What’s wrong with it? It isn’t your staid, generic van Dyck, I grant you. But what of it? This is a new age, Jeeves, one with art that’s full of triangles where there should be faces, and pipes that aren’t pipes. What’s wrong with a bit of a twist on the old, icy Dutch landscape?”

“I have no quarrel with the experiments of the contemporary age, sir. But if I may speak freely—”

“You jolly well speak freely, with or without my permission.”

“I apologize if I have, in the past, caused offense, sir. But as I was saying, this seems less an exploration of the uncharted waters of representational technique than a perversion of the masters of old.”

“Large words, Jeeves.”

“And beyond that,” he continued, “there is something sinister and malevolent in its aspect.”

“Well, you’ll just have to get used to it, Jeeves,” I said. “Because I like it and it’s staying.”

“Yes, sir.” Jeeves moved away from it and towards the kitchen. “Shall I prepare the tea, sir?”

“Right-ho.”

* * *

The next morning, I reached about on the nightstand for the bell and rang for Jeeves. 

But minutes passed and the door did not open. 

I rang again, and received the same disquieting lack of response. 

Finally, I eased my way out of the swaddling bedclothes and into the hallway, which was as silent as one of the less cheerful morgues I’ve visited.

“Jeeves?” I called. 

I searched the entirety of the flat, but it was empty, despite his hat and coat still hanging in the closet. I checked the kitchen. I checked behind the sofa, because you never knew. I went into the elevator to ask the man if Jeeves had gone downstairs to the lobby for some reason, but he said no. I went so far as to let myself into Jeeves’s room. I’d never looked inside before. Noblesse oblige and all that. The bed was made, but that signified nothing. 

I went back to the kitchen and saw a cup of tea on the work table, lukewarm and half-finished. From what I knew of Jeeves’s personal habits, only something dire could have interrupted his imbibing. Something dire or else the young master ringing the bell, but the latter didn’t seem to have been the case.

Something, was, as they say, most certainly up.

However, the realization did little in the way of propelling me into the day. I did what any self-respecting chap would have done when faced with an absent valet in the morning; I went back to bed. 

Hours went by, and morning, which had already been on the wane when I’d awoken, slipped into afternoon. Still, Jeeves had not returned. I’d broken the clapper on the bell from ringing it so hard, if only to hear some noise. Eventually, I was forced to dress myself, and leave the house without having had my tea.

As Jeeves would have said, it was a most disturbing state of affairs.

There was only one place to go: The Drones. There I could get a late, but still desirable, cup of oolong, some of those nuts I so liked, and wash the entire thing down with a brandy. 

I dragged myself into the smoking room, like a sled that has discovered an appalling lack of snow. I noticed a solitary armchair near a pair of silhouettes that did not belong to the crowd I usually saw there at this hour, but there was something familiar about them—one of them in particular. The endlessly long legs stretched out in front of him, that placidly pleasant intonation.

“Nancy?” I asked, drawing near. 

I had to repeat it a couple of times, with each iteration losing confidence. But then, slowly, as if with the greatest pain, he looked up, lifting a monocle to his right eye and peering at me through it. 

I hadn’t seen old Nancy Smith in years, not since my penultimate year at Eton. He’d never been in my particular circle, nor in any other, now that I was thinking of it. He’d been an odd fellow, but not a bad one. No one disliked him; we merely didn’t understand him, and had been too hurried to listen for very long to his many speeches. He’d been a surprisingly good cricket player, and would have gone on to make up one of the Lord’s eleven, had he stayed. I hadn’t immediately noticed his absence when we returned one term, but one of the other boys—Chuffy, I believe—told us he’d been pulled out on account of bad reports, and sent to some hole called Sedleigh. It might as well have been the dark side the moon. We pitied poor Nancy, of course, and thought it awful hard luck. But no more had ever been said.

Yet here he was, in the Drones. As I thought back to our time together at Eton, I realized there was no better person to turn to in my time of need. Nancy had always had quite the brain, the closest in size and power to Jeeves’s that I’d ever come across. 

“Comrade Wooster?” Nancy said.

I frowned at the unexpected moniker, but let it pass for the moment. 

“It _is_ you! I didn’t know you belonged to the Drones.”

“I do,” he said, in that regal way he’d always had, even as a small, spot-free, first-form boy, as though he were doing you a favor by existing. “I do not often patronize our mutual club, preferring to spend the autumn evenings at the Senior Conservative. There, one with nerves as delicate as myself can smoke quietly without the fear of having bread flung at his head. However, this evening, I said to myself, ‘Be a man, Psmith, and brave the wilds of the Drones, for their sherry is superior even though the carpet has gravy stains in spots.’ Also, my friend here wanted something a bit livelier than is generally found in those hallowed halls. Comrade Wooster, may I introduce you to Comrade Jackson.” 

Ah, so that was why he looked familiar. Once given the name, the old Wooster brain put two and two together to make something more than three. I’d been to Lord’s the week before and seen this chappie bat a century. Anyone who followed cricket—meaning, anyone who breathed—knew the Jackson clan. Cricket seemed to run through their blood the way majesty ran through the Bourbons'. “Pleasure to meet you. Thanks to you, I won five on two last week.”

“Comrade Jackson is a man on whom a bet will never be ill-placed.”

“Oh, stow it, Smith,” Jackson said.

And, to my surprise, Smith actually stowed. For as long as it took to let Jackson get his next thought out, at any rate, which was the longest I’d ever seen him keep quiet in the entire time I’d been at school with him.

“Did you just call him Nancy?” Jackson asked me.

“Yes, what of it?”

“But why?”

“Well, at Eton, I had already claimed Bertie, so Pertie was too close to be useful. The masters always called him ‘The Impertinent Mr Smith’. Which got us to calling him ‘Impertinence.’ Which led to...”

“Must we dwell on these painful passages in my biography?” Smith asked.

But Jackson was laughing heartily. “It’s too funny. Nancy! I should start—”

“If you have any regard for me at all, you won’t.” There was something strangled in Smith’s voice. Closer to begging than I’d ever heard from him. 

Jackson softened.

“But it _is_ awfully funny.”

“Humour comes in many flavours, some of which my delicate stomach can no longer digest.” Smith turned to me with a pained eye but a newly light tone. “I read your piece on ‘What the Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing’.” 

“You read Milady’s Boudoir?” I asked. I’d never questioned Aunt Dahlia about her readership. I’d supposed it was made up mostly of other aunts. Perhaps their nieces, too. It had never occurred to me that one of my set might read the drivel.

“My sister is a loyal subscriber, and I had the pleasure of perusing the publication on a recent visit to her home, whilst hiding from her children in the broom closet. It was strong, stirring stuff. But your piece in particular called to mind the great essayists of history. If Montesquieu himself had chosen such a subject, I am not sure even he could have delivered words to the page with the same effluent energy and vim that you did. Your comments on the appropriate flowers for button-holes, coming just after such elucidating remarks on the fit of top hats, had a certain poetry.”

This was always the worst of Nancy, I remembered, as I stood there boggling at him. He talked a blue streak and left a chap—even a chap like me—at a loss. A complete loss.

The old, now-remembered strain of conversing with this odd duck sapped the last shreds of energy I had. I sank into a nearby armchair, my knees giving way beneath me.

“You look beleaguered, old friend of my youth,” Smith said with concern. He called for a waiter. “Some tea, if you please, and a brandy.”

“How did you know that was exactly what I came for?”

Smith bowed slightly in his chair. “I live to serve. Now, tell me, what ails you?”

“It’s my man, you see. He’s disappeared.”

“Disappeared how?” Jackson asked.

“In the usual way, by not appearing when expected,” I explained. “I had to dress myself today.”

“I had observed that you did not look quite as nattily turned out as I’d expected from the author of such a work,” Smith said. “But I thought it polite not to comment.”

“Dash it, of course I look a fright. I can’t remember the last time I drew my own bath. I didn’t, in the end. I just pulled on the nearest togs and hastened here.”

“Dark times,” Smith said, shaking his head.

“It sounds to me as though you need a new valet,” Jackson said, “given that this one runs off in the night. He probably snuck out to go dancing and is lying drunk in an alley somewhere. He’ll turn up.”

“Well said, Comrade Jackson. Though I must say that while your assumption is, as always, perfectly well-thought and reasonable, in this rarest of cases, it is not the full story. I have heard tell of this valet of Comrade Wooster’s. According to all who have met him, he possesses a brain second only to yours.”

At this shocking statement, I glanced at Jackson. My first opinion had been of a healthy-looking cricket player, no more. Nothing had given me an inkling that his brain competed with his arm in terms of being hot stuff. 

“That’s just the thing,” I said. “He isn’t the sort to go on mad sprees. I fear something has happened to the man.”

“Would you mind, Comrade Wooster, if we set ourselves to this case? Comrade Jackson and I may be of some assistance in this trying matter.”

“What, you mean to say you’ll help?”

“We shall leave no stone in London unturned until he is found.”

“I think he’s just gone down to the races. It’s the likeliest answer,” Jackson said.

“May be, may be, but before we investigate there, do we have your permission to sweep the scene of the crime, so to speak? To get our bearings in the background elements of the case?”

“If you like. Let me finish this brandy and then we’ll pop over to the flat.” I brightened. “Perhaps he’s already back.”

“In which case we would be pleased to make his acquaintance. And if not, we shall take the case,” Smith informed me. “The only reward I ask of you, old school days chum, is that you will call me Psmith, as Comrade Jackson here does. The P is silent, as in pneumonia, or ptarmigan.”

With anyone else, I’d have thought such a request rather rude. It isn’t often someone you’ve known since you were in short pants asks you to eschew the sobriquet and go back to formal surnames. But as I’ve said, Nancy had always been a strange bird. 

“I’ll call you anything you like, so long as you help me find Jeeves.”

* * *

“I’ve never heard anyone call you anything but Smith,” Jackson said half an hour later, as we walked. “Except your father.”

“And now you know my secret shame, Comrade. Why do you think I made such a point to begin a new line when I entered Sedleigh? I had been brought low, but had decided to look for a silver lining in the storm cloud of my life. Deprived of Eton, but given a new start. The P before my name is more than silent; it is a smokescreen. Distract them, as Houdini always says. Or would, if he ever revealed his secret. Distract and confuse, and they’ll be too busy thinking about that P to call you Nancy.”

“Well, it’s worked,” Jackson said simply.

“Until today.” His eye slid sadly over to mine. “But never mind my painful recollections. Let us focus on this disquieting development in the formerly peaceful and serene home of Comrade Wooster. You say the man has disappeared.”

“Very nearly vanished. In fact, it can’t have been long before I woke. Now that I’m thinking of it, I woke because I heard a noise in the hall, I’m sure of it.”

“What sort of noise? Was it closer to the footsteps of a man who is sneaking out to lead a life of debauchery, or was it a struggle to the death against a deadly foe?”

“It’s hard to say. More of the latter, though there’s no sign of a struggle now.”

“Curious. Well, let us see.”

I turned the k. in the old d. and walked into the flat. I gave them a brief tour. Jackson leaned down to inspect a shoe print in the carpet. 

“Funny,” he said. “They stop here.”

“Comrade Jackson always senses the key elements of a scene. He is always first to grasp the vital notes and discover a Clue. Sherlock Holmes could do no better. It is my great fortune and privilege to have him as my confidential secretary and advisor.”

Again, I looked at the chap. Nothing he’d said so far had alerted me to Jackson’s intellectual preeminence, but perhaps I’d been spoiled, I told myself. When a chap’s got a fellow like Jeeves in the home, who dreams up corking great ideas every hour of the day, and twice on Christmas, one loses the ability to appreciate brains in others.

“This is a rummy painting,” Jackson noted next.

Like the proud owner of a prize-winner giving a tour of the stables, I drifted purposefully over to where Jackson stood, with the intention of giving a casual but full tour of the painting’s most pertinent details. What else did I have the bally thing for, if not this? The arm gestured, the vocal chords prepared to produce a professorial tone, but the thing was undone by Jackson’s next remark, which happened to erupt just before my prepared one.

“Looks like one of those Dutch nightmares my uncle is always on about,” he said, with what sounded suspiciously like disinterest. “Except more modern.”

I was ready to dissuade him of the opinion when something caught my eye. I peered closer at the painting. 

I’m not much of a one for gasping and other dramatics. We Woosters manfully contain our emotions, and would register the sinking of the Titanic with a mere, “Tut”, or the declaration of war with a simple “Quite.” It takes much to stagger me to exhortations, but this did.

For there, standing just outside the church on the town square, and rendered in possibly-Flemish, possibly Baroque pastiche, was Jeeves. He may have only been two inches tall, but it was unmistakably him, standing outside the church door, watching what looked to be the preparations for some sort of May Day festivity.

“Jeeves, what on earth are you doing there?”

“I know the strain has gotten to you, Comrade Wooster, but cheer up. Be a man. Men look for clues; they do not stand about talking to paintings. The thing is beneath you,” Psmith said from nearby.

“But he’s there! We’ve found him.” 

Psmith shimmied over to where Jackson and I stood and peered through his monocle at where I pointed.

“Are you certain? It seems to me that a valet as good as I have heard yours is ought to more than three inches tall and occupying more than two dimensions.”

“I don’t know what’s happened, but it’s him! It’s as clear as day. Something’s happened. He wasn’t there when I brought the thing home yesterday.” I looked even closer. “And it’s changed more than just him, too. Look at that figure there. Yesterday, he was wearing an awful lavender cravat. Today, he is wearing a black one.”

“He spreads sunshine wherever he goes,” Psmith said.

“But look,” Jackson interrupted. “This is all rot. How would someone get into a painting?”

“Comrade Jackson, you have hit upon the very crux of the matter, in your usual, efficient manner. For if we are able to retrieve your man Jeeves _from_ this painting, we must first ascertain how he got into it.”

“Well, I haven’t the foggiest,” I said, still staring and trying to count the differences between what it had looked like the day before and what it looked like now. It seemed to me as though Jeeves were staring right at me, his serene face asking for rescue but telling me ‘whenever you might manage it, sir’.”

“I believe I need a cigarette and a drink in order to properly think,” Psmith said. “This case has already blown the hinges off my previous experience. But there is a way through, there always is.”

There was nothing for it but to retire to the living room for a minute and have a think, as Psmith called it. We stared dumbly at one another for a few moments, and then Psmith began to ask questions. Where the painting had come from, how long it had been in the house. The probing questions of an investigator. 

Jackson stepped out for a moment to visit the washroom. I heard a slight scuffle in the hallway, but thought nothing of it. 

It was some time before we noticed his failure to return. 

“Comrade Jackson?” Psmith called.

There was no answer. 

We both roused ourselves to look for him.

“Comrade Jackson?” Psmith called again as he searched the rooms.

A creeping sense of horror told me to look at the picture. Sure enough, there was Jackson, now standing beside Jeeves, setting up a wicket.

“Where on earth did he find a cricket bat?” I asked.


End file.
